The notion that a text is coherent in virtue of the ''relations'' that
hold between the elements of that text has become fairly common curre
ncy, both in the study of discourse coherence and in the field of text
generation. The set of relations proposed in Rhetorical Structure The
ory (Mann & Thompson, 1987) has had particular influence in both of th
ese fields. But the widespread adoption of ''relational'' terminology
belies a certain amount of confusion about the relational constructs t
hemselves: No two theorists use exactly the same set of relations, and
often there seems no motivation for introducing a new relation beyond
considerations of descriptive adequacy or engineering expedience. To
alleviate this confusion, it is useful to think of relations not just
as constructs with descriptive or operational utility, but as construc
ts with psychological reality, modelling real cognitive processes in r
eaders and writers. This conception of coherence relations suggests a
methodology for delineating a set of relations to work with. Evidence
that a relation is actually used by speakers of a language can be obta
ined by looking at the language itself-in particular by looking at the
range of cue phrases the language provides for signalling relations.
It is to be expected that simple methods will have evolved for signall
ing the relations we find most useful. This article presents a bottom-
up methodology for determining a set of relations on the basis of the
cue phrases that can be used to mark them in text. This methodology ha
s the advantage of starting from concrete linguistic data, rather than
from controversial assumptions about notions like ''intention'' and '
'semantics.''